Tungsten carbide is widely used today with a wide application range that includes cutting tools, mining tools and wear parts. The material can be produced by a variety of different manufacturing processes. Several preferred methods of forming grains of tungsten carbide embedded in a cobalt matrix are disclosed in Polizotti U.S. Pat. No. 4,851,041, as well as McCandlish U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,230,729 and 5,352,269.
Tungsten and tungsten carbide products are relatively expensive, and there is an extreme need to recover scrap by recycling spent and unused tungsten carbide and tungsten-based products, both for environmental and cost reasons.
There are several processes currently used to recycle tungsten carbide and tungsten products. These processes include the zinc process, the coldstream process, an alkali-leach process, chlorination systems, electrolysis, and high-temperature smelting. With the exception of the zinc and coldstream processes, the other chemical methods involve numerous conversion, extraction and precipitation steps that increase the cycle time and cost. Many of these chemical methods involve the use of acids, bases, and various inorganic salts.
The zinc and cold stream processes do permit a direct conversion into usable powder, but material purity is a problem, and thus the application for this type of reclaimed material is extremely limited. Typically, the more common zinc process involves heating, sublimation, and crushing processes to recover WC-Co powder. A key difference is that the zinc process leaves the grain size intact, causing successive grain growth on each cycle.